HOUR GLASS AND SCYTHE

by: Unknown

In nearly all Masonic rituals in the United States,
these two emblems of the third degree are explained in practically the form
given by Thomas Smith Webb:

“The Hour-Glass is an emblem of human life; behold!
how swiftly the sands run, and how rapidly our lives are drawing to a close.
We cannot, without astonishment, behold the little particles which are
contained in this machine, how they pass away almost imperceptibly, and yet
to our surprise, in the short space of an hour, they are all exhausted.
Thus wastes man! today, he puts forth the tender leaves of hope;
tomorrow, blossoms and bears his blushing honors which upon him; the next
day comes a frost, which nips the shoot, and when he thinks his greatness is
still aspiring, he falls, like autumn leaves, to enrich our mother earth.

“The Scythe is an emblem of time, which cuts the
brittle thread of life and launches us into eternity. Behold, what
havoc the scythe of time makes amongst the human race; if by chance we
should escape the numerous evils incident to childhood and youth, and with
that health and vigor arrive to the years of manhood, yet withall we must
soon be cut down by the all-devouring scythe of time, and be gathered into
the land where our fathers are gone before us. Both these emblems
seems to be inventions of the ingenious and resourceful American who left do
tremendous an imprint upon our ceremonies. MacKensie, the English
Masonic encyclopedist, says of the hour glass: “Used in the third
degree by Webb - but not essential nor authorized in any way.

Of the scythe, he says: “Since the time of
Webb, the scythe has been adopted in the American system of Freemasonry, as
an emblem of the power of time in destroying the institutions of mankind.
In England it is no regarded as of any typical meaning.” Woodford, in
Kenning’s Encyclopedia, says: “Hour Glass - Said by some to be a
Masonic symbol, Oliver inter alios, as an emblem of human life; but in our
opinion, not strictly speaking so. Woodford does not mention the scythe.

Mackey, (Clegg revised edition)b credits the hour
glass to Webb and states: “As a Masonic symbol it is of comparatively
modern date.” The familiar illustrations of these emblems, shown on many if
not most Lodge charts, and in that collection of monstrosities which
commercial companies have sold to confiding Lodges on lantern slides to
illustrate the lectures, are based on the Doolittle pictures in the “True
Masonic Chart” of Jeremy Cross. Here the scythe appears in the drawing
of the marble monument, held under the arm of the very chubby Father Time,
who is provided with a most substantial p[air of wings. It also
appears as a separate illustration for the “scythe of time.” In the
same quaint work the hour glass is illustrated with a pair of open wings.
If young in Freemasonry, both scythe and hour glass are very old.

Old Testament days knew the sickle; ancient Egypt had
reaping knives. Just when the knife or sickle was curved into the
familiar two-handed tool with the crooked handle is less important than that
it was earl associated with a symbolic meaning, as an instrument for the
reaping of humanity, the cutting off of life. Revelation 14-14 to 20
inclusive, is illustrative:

“And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the
cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown,
and in his hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple,
crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle,
and reap; for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the
earth is ripe. And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on
the earth; and the earth was reaped. And another angel came out of the
temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another
angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a
loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle , saying;

Thrust thy sickle, and gather the clusters of the
vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. And the angle thrust
in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast
it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was
trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the
horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”

Ancient Greece and Rome knew three cruel fates;
Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. Clotho held the distaff from which the
thread of life was spun by Lachesis, while Atropos wielded the shears and
cut the thread when life was ended. They were deemed cruel because
neither she who held the staff of life, she who spun the thread nor she who
cut it, regarded the wishes of any man.

In the Sublime Degree Freemasons hear a beautiful
prayer, taken almost wholly from the Book of Job (14, to 14 inclusive).
Just why the fathers of the ritual thought they could improve upon Job, and
left out here a verse, thee substituted a word, is a sealed mystery.
The phrases of the King James version seem intimately connected with the
ritual of our hour glass and scythe of time:

Man that is born of a woman is of a few days and full
of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut ; he fleeth also
as a shadow, and continueth not. And dost thou open thine eyes upon
such a one, and bringest me unto judgment with thee? Who can bring a
clean thing out of an unclean? not one. Seeing his days are
determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his
bounds that he cannot pass; turn from him, that he may rest, till he shall
accomplish, as an hireling, his day. For there is hope of a tree, if
it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch
thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth,
and the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it
will bud, and bring boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth
away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the Waters
fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down
and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be
raised out of their sleep. O that thou wouldest keep me secret, until
thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time and remember me!
If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time
will I wait, till my change come.”

“If a man die, shall he live again?” Job’s cry
of despair has rung down the centuries; it is one of Freemasonry’s glories
that her answer is as ringing! Her tragedy ends in hope; her
assurances of immortality are positive. Ritual of hour glass and
scythe, if read alone, is gloomy and disheartening, but not as parts of a
whole which end in a certainty of immortality.

Measurement of time has demanded the attention of
learned men in all ages. Our modern clocks, watches and chronometers
have a long and intricate history, and many ancestors quite unlike their
descendants; among them the sun dial and hour glass. Just how old the
instrument is which measures time by the slow dropping of liquid or running
sand is not easily stated; ancient Egypt knew a water clock and Plato is
said to have invented the “Clepsydra,” in water drips from container to
container, marking hate passing of hours. The substitution of sand for
water must have occurred early, sand having the great advantage that it runs
more slowly than water and does not evaporate in the process. The
sealed semi-vacuum double bulbs of more modern days were then, of course,
unknown.

Nor can the earliest symbolic relationship between
the passage of hours and days and man’s life both here and hereafter be
stated; the connection between time and life is so intimate that it is
difficult to believe that ideas of duration as a factor of life, as well as
a practical matter of eating, sleeping, etc., did not arise coincidentally.

Both old and New Testaments have this poetry; Isaiah
38-10:

“I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to
the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years.” and
John 5-25:

“Verily, verily, I say unto you; The hour is coming,
and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they
that hear shall live.”

The brethren who built upon the simple esoteric work
of operative Lodges the magnificent system of philosophy, life and morals
which is our Freemasonry, wrought with the viewpoint of their times.
Yet the abiding spirit of the ritual is a reality, otherwise it would not
have lived in men’s hearts and worked its gentle miracles for so long a
period. Apparently taking some somber pleasure from dwelling on
mortality, decay, the evening of life, old age and death; these early
Masonic ritualists nevertheless builded well when they endeavored to impress
upon all brethren the vital importance of time. Indeed, time is so
intimately interwoven in the degrees of Freemasonry (see Short Talk
Bulletin, January, 1928) that it very obviously has a symbolic ass well as
moral significance.

Shakespeare wrote of “the inaudible and noiseless
foot of time,” and “time the nurser and breeder of all good.” Richter
denominated time “the chrysalis of eternity;” Franklin called it “the herb
that cures all diseases.” Tusser said: “Time tries the truth in
everything,” echoing Cicero’s “Time is the herald of truth.” Paine dug
the meat from this nut in writing “Time makes more converts than reason.”
Freemasonry’s ritual deals with time in a strictly limited sense; we speak
of a definite number of years the temple was in building; of the days the
Master was buried; of the scythe of time, which cuts the brittle thread of
life; of the hour glass which marks the passing of life. But in the
symbolic sense Freemasonry makes of time a vast conception, allied with the
very fundamentals of God and the hereafter. Her whole teaching is of
the preparation for another and better life by a substantial and an
honorable living of this one. Freemasonry makes a very clear
distinction between everyday time, which all men share; - eight hours for
labor, eight hours for God and a worthy brother, and eight hours for
refreshment and sleep - and the time his immortal part must spend in the
hereafter. The scythe of time “cuts the brittle thread of life and
launches us into eternity.” The immortal part of man “never, never,
never, dies.” “Time, patience and persever-ance will accomplish all
things.” “Through the valley of the shadow of death, he may finally
arise from the tomb of transgression to shine as the stars, forever and
ever.”

Quotations might be multiplied; they will occur to
all whom the ritual is familiar. Lucky the Master Mason who has
grasped the deeper meanings of the hour glass and the scythe, and comforted
is he who see behind their gloomy outlook a gleam of light; “In the night of
death hope sees a star and love can hear the flutter of an angel’s wing,” as
the great agnostic phrased it.” The timelessness of time is a hard
conception; that eternity has neither beginning nor ending is beyond the
mental grasp even of great philosophers. Let a poet bring the
unbringable within reach:

DURATION

Aweary of the endless days, my lot I wept That life
and love, too long, should pass so slow.

Some Power my eyelids touched, so that I slept

And stood upon a star. I saw below,

Alone in space, our tiny earthly sphere;

Its continents but islands in the deep;

Its tempest but a breeze; its mountains sheer, Low
hill; its oceans only ponds, asleep.

The northern ice revolved about a stone, A mighty
boulder, grim and great and high;

An hundred miles it stretched its length, moss-grown;

An hundred miles it towered to the sky

So rapid spun the giant pigmy world

Years sped as seconds. By some mighty Law

Ten centuries in empty space were hurled

As I drew breath. A little bird I saw

Which rubbed its beak against the rock. “See,
there He sharpens it, “ a Voice said in my ear, “Once every thousand years.”
I watched it wear The granite down until a pole was clear.

When that gigantic task , by one small bird In cycles
of a thousand years. at last Was done again the Silent Voice I heard: